Occidentali’s karma? L’innesto del parlamento in contesti ‘estranei’ alla tradizione giuridica occidentale

In the XXI Century, parliaments have been established in all the countries of the world. However, the spreading of this institution is quite recent: until the 1940s, the Japanese Dieta was the only elected parliament outside of the Western world. In addition, in many non-Western countries, the performance of parliaments remains quite poor, according to the few ‘parliamentary indexes’ in existence. The purpose of this article is to explore the gap between the spreading and performance of parliaments, by considering the possible influence of the local culture (or tradition) as an independent variable. The hypothesis is that parliament, as an institution, is (as many other institutions and even more) closely rooted in a specific culture or tradition, which existed in Europe and in the US at the very time when it was established, at the end of the XVIII Century. In other words, the parliament implies a set of concepts (such as individual freedom, equality, nation, sovereignty, state) whose absence undermines the proper functioning and efficiency of the institution. To assess this hypothesis, the article, after addressing the methodological issues raised by this perspective (paragraphs 1 and 2) addresses the following profiles: it makes reference to an idealtype, i.e. the parliament according to the Western tradition, by pointing out its essential features (paragraph 3). Subsequently, an attempt is made to identify the sphere of those "non-Western" traditions that are relevant to the research, by outlining the characteristics likely to affect the performance of the parliament (paragraph 4). Only at this point it will be then possible to move on to check how the Western model of parliament has circulated in States where these traditions and cultures remain influential, that is, to compare parliaments (paragraph 5). The article focuses on Africa and Asia. In the conclusions, the article highlights again the challenges that originate from this type of approach and proposes a methodology for the further development and deepening of the research (paragraph 6).